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Looking for reviews of Great Value Vacations

I'm wondering if anyone has ever purchased a vacation package from Great Value Vacations. They are offering, what sounds like, a fabulous Italy vacation through Groupon for $1500 to Italy's Amalfi Coast and Rome. The trip includes 7 nights hotel and car and airfare from 3 different cities in the US - NY, Chicago and LAX. I'd love to purchase but cannot find any reviews on the company and wonder if I should try it or not. Please advise!

What you want is something for nothing (or at half price) basically. There is no 'free lunch' in real life and often people find that out the hard way.

Reviews are meaningless however many you find. Often the reviews are writtin by someone from the company being reviewed. Review sites really have little chance of stopping that. Often bad reviews are written by people working for competitors.

Some 'cheap deals' from companies such as Groupon et al end up leaving the supplier with no room for a profit. What do you suppose those suppliers then deliver to the customer?

Well interestingly enough, I just went to Fodor's Deals section for Europe and next to all the Septre offers was all kinds of Great Value Vacation deals. So if Fodors is listing them, I'm guessing they are reputable. So maybe they are just trying to build their customer base a little more by offering a good deal on groupon? I tried googling this company and could not find any reviews. Thanks for your comments. I will try googling again!

>>Some 'cheap deals' from companies such as Groupon et al end up leaving the supplier with no room for a profit. What do you suppose those suppliers then deliver to the customer? <<

Groupon doesn't have anything to do w/ it. The vendor/tour company/merchant decides to post the 'deal' and decides the price/terms/whatever. The VAST majority of groupons are marketing efforts by the vendor - hoping to get return business/loyalty customers.

(The business model isn't working out exactly as planned - but that is for another discussion)

Which of the reviews are by actual travellers vs. employees of the company janisj? Do you have a way of knowing? I can set up 10 Facebook accounts and post 10 favourable reviews in an hour. As I wrote before, reviews are meaningless unless you know the reviewer or s/he is a well known reviewer.

We just got back from a tour they arranged through Italy (Rome, Florence, Venice). It was ok. HOWEVER, the hotels/places of accommodation in every case were very far out from the site--a half an hour to nearly an hour. And in these places, few Italians spoke English, so we were always scrambling to discover the way into the City, even with gps (which couldn't locate some of the remote areas). Aer Lingus rules however--they were very good and always on time.

The moderators assumed your first post was a solicited review and nuked it. Your new one sounds similar. (Great Value Vacations is known for asking their customers to post on travel sites)

Since you've never been on Fodors before >>Better than joining just to be negative and discourage others from traveling. << probably comes from ignorance of the site - folks on these forums encourage travel - we don't discourage them. But we also don't advertise.

The original question was asked in July. It is now the end of November. Why, unless you have been asked to do so, would you join a (non-review) site to post a review that is no longer even relevant? And persist in doing so after your posts were removed? Now, if you wanted to post an actual trip report that would be different.

If you had spent some time here reading what others have written, you would have discovered that very few posters take tours, and even fewer with outfits like GVV.

My review of Great Value Vacations" Worst travel company I ever dealt with in all my travel experience. Very bad customer service. Terrible value for the monies spent. Once they get your monies they could care less about assisting you with any problems you may have. You are completely on your own. Their instructions are unclear. I would never use this company again or commend them to anyone. Sent us to out of the way hotels....no assistance with the train ride from Madrid to Barcelona except to book it for us. Could have done that myself. You get NO added value from this company. You can do much better just booking your own hotel and air since they did no more than that for us a. Plus we would have had better hotels and more information on our own. Their customer service is very unobliging and not very helpful nor knowledgeable. Buyer beware. You will be in for a lot of aggravation if you use this company. There are much better companies out there who give much more value, expertise and assistance than this one.

Just now coming to this forum for Great Value reviews, which I should've done before. We booked the trip tabarrett asked about above, for March 2015. Now need to change the outbound flight and are getting nothing but static from Great Value. Airline says we have to deal with Great Value. Great Value says the only way we can change the flight is to pay them $1700 (so basically buy a completely new trip). Having been forced to change the homebound leg of another trip 6 months ago, on the same airline, I know they're lying about the price. Will never, ever, book with them again.

Great Value is probably not lying. You almost certainly have consolidator tickets, which have massive restrictions. Airlines sell consolidator tickets to agencies at a discount, which is how come the agency can create a "value" package. If you buy a package you buy the restrictions. Just because you were able to change a specific ticket on the same airline, it doesn't mean that EVERY ticket on that airline can be changed without penalties, or at all.

Thanks for the reply thursdaysd! Totally realize that not "EVERY ticket on that airline can be changed without penalties, or at all." Just felt the situations were comparable because both were nonrefundable "value" packages to major European destinations, and in the case 6 months ago, the penalty was total $500 ($300 change fee, $200 fare difference). With Great Value I didn't expect to get away penalty-free, and thought the cost might be similar, but instead they say I'd have to pay the full cost of the trip all over again. Extremely hard for me to believe that's the true cost of a flight change.

My bad for booking with them. I won't do it again. They've been so rude about the whole thing, I hate to think what it would be like if something went wrong while on the trip. At this point I'm agreeing with freddalke's post that says we're on our own now that GV has our $$.

I've lurked off and on for several years when seeking information for trip planning, but I do feel compelled now to make an account and say that my review of Great Value Vacations is basically "kill it with fire." The issue is that I have four names on my passport. This caused GREAT CONFUSION with GVV's customer service rep. My travel buddy had a scan of my passport when she made the arrangements for a trip to Ireland. She read my name off exactly the way it appears there and had the lady repeat it back. My friend thought we were square at that point. A little while later, however, I realized they had listed my name incorrectly on all the documents. I told them they needed to fix this, and the supervisor, "Sherri," insisted that my friend made her change the name to the incorrect way. She supposed she could review the recording of the call, and I said please do. Here's an e-mail I sent to my travel buddy after getting off the phone with them for the third time. Changed my specific info for privacy. And...action:

So I am ready to punch Great Value Vacations in the face. Sherri called today and was like, "Reviewed the conversation. It was correct and your friend made us change it. Still $175, please." And I was like, "So what did she say that made the change happen?" And she wouldn't answer me directly for five minutes and then she put me on hold and came back to say, "Oh, we submitted the change to your ticket last night and it's only $50." I said, "How could it be $50 now when it was $175 ten minutes ago??" She said, "Well because I just talked to the air department and Aer Lingus is only charging $50 since we're just switching names." Seriously? So you didn't do any fact finding before you called me? So I asked her what the name currently was, and she kept reversing it back and forth every time, so I asked her to email me the correction, and she was like,
"What's your e-mail address?"
"A B C Delta--"
"A B C and another C?"
"No, A B C D E L T A"
"A B C C H A R L I E?"
NO.

So I got the e-mail and it still looked wrong and she couldn't explain it and was getting irritated, so I said I was going to call Aer Lingus to make sure they have it right on their end. THAT guy said, "They've requested it to be CHARLIE DELTA/ALPHA BRAVO, and it needs to be DELTA/ALPHA BRAVO CHARLIE." So I e-mailed Sherri back with my passport scan, said it had to match that, make it match THAT, and send me your supervisor's contact information.

Then I called Aer Lingus back and asked if they took possession of the ticket if I paid for a premium seat, and the lady said no, so I explained my situation, and she was like, they wanted to charge you how much? She said Aer Lingus only charges when the ticket is being assigned to a different person. They don't charge for corrections. So Sherri was being dishonest. [Sherri had insisted more than once in previous phone discussions that any fees were out of her hands and determined by the airline.] Then she put me on a long hold, came back, and said her super said I'm fine and as long as all four names are on my passport, I'll be able to board the plane. "So don't worry about it, don't pay anything extra."

Sherri never e-mailed me back with her supervisor's information. She did call again, but only to insist that everything was now correct and why was I upset? Getting my boarding pass did take some extra time at the airport, because no, things did not match exactly, but they did finally give me the okay and made a note on my boarding pass for security, et al.

The rest of the trip was fine. All our vouchers were accepted as advertised. The room quality varied a bit among the hotels and even among the rooms (because we had to change a couple of times when it was clear that someone had smoked in our non-smoking room recently). The hotels were indeed out of the way in all instances, but we knew that in advance and planned around it, anticipating a driving tour anyway. We ended up having an excellent trip, but I will never use Great Value Vacations again.